


i got a lot of trust (and no one to give it to)

by civillove



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29154357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/civillove/pseuds/civillove
Summary: a case of the week that involves an apartment murder and the constant struggle of dani wanting to trust malcolm, even when he’s keeping something from her--Dani really wishes she could say she wasn’t starting off her day with something other than murder. When she allows herself to think about her work, like really think about it—she goes to bed thinking about the terrible things human beings can do to one another. And when she wakes up? That notion is still true.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright/Dani Powell
Comments: 13
Kudos: 67





	i got a lot of trust (and no one to give it to)

**Author's Note:**

> beginning of season 2 vibes but nothing too spoilery. thanks especially to the anon that missed my brightwell on tumblr! i missed writing them too :3 enjoy!

Dani really wishes she could say she wasn’t starting off her day with something other than murder. When she allows herself to think about her work, like _really_ think about it—she goes to bed thinking about the terrible things human beings can do to one another. And when she wakes up? That notion is still true.

She hasn’t given a lot of time and effort towards what her future might look like, getting a boyfriend or contemplating a husband, kids. But a part of her wonders—how is she supposed to bring anyone up in a world like this? While there are obviously some definite good things, it never seems to balance out with the other side, the darkness that lurks around many street corners and people’s intentions.

Kind of difficult to be an optimist when she’s flashing her badge to be let under yellow tape at another crime scene. She takes a deep breath of cold air into her lungs, and it feels like ice is splintering inside her chest before she makes her way into the apartment building. The victim’s place is near the top floor and she turns towards a sign that mentions an elevator when she sees Malcolm coming her way with an annoyed pinch on his face.

He motions past her, towards the stairs, and…ah, great.

“Elevator busted?” She asks, looking at him as they begin to walk side by side up the steps.

“Why wouldn’t it be? Our victim lives on the fourteenth floor.”

Dani smiles a little, sticking her hands in her pockets. “Cardio is good for you.”

“Good for _you,_ maybe,” He throws back but there’s a hint of a smile to his face as he glances over her form, turning the corner for the next set of steps, “I already did a few miles on the elliptical this morning.”

“Let me guess, couldn’t sleep?”

“Ha.” That’s all Bright’s willing to give, deciding to concentrate on the fact that they’ve still got about ten flights to go.

Though Dani will never admit it, she has been relatively impressed with Malcolm’s performance ever since Gil partnered them up. JT’s been on less active duty lately with a baby on the way, working a lot more from home or not taking as many hours in the field.

Working so close with Bright had been a definite struggle, to say the least. If it’s not already obvious, Bright works on his own wavelength, in his own head. He’s difficult to get a good read on and Dani struggles with throwing herself out there, with trust. Needless to say, they’re working on it, even though it feels like pulling teeth sometimes.

Bright pauses at the top of the stairs on the fourteenth floor, trying to regulate his breathing a little with one deep breath. Dani snickers slightly, patting his back between his shoulder blades and they begin to make their way towards the intended apartment.

Dani keeps her hands in her pockets as they enter the apartment, her eyes skittering over the mess of the living room and the kitchen. Someone’s ransacked it. Overturned furniture and other belongings—looking for cash maybe? Or jewelry?

Edrisa with her team and Gil are in the living room, where the vic is, twenty-nine-year-old Roberta Vanderlee, half-naked and face down in a pool of her own blood. Dani draws a breath into her lungs, separating herself from what she’s seeing—sometimes that’s the only way she doesn’t get overwhelmed.

Her eyes follow Malcolm around the room because she knows that so many tiny details are speaking to him at once. She wonders sometimes how he absorbs them all, how he knows what to listen to in order to give them understandings about this case, about the profile they’re looking for. Dani considers herself a decent cop but she doesn’t always see the same things Bright does. She gets that’s why he’s on the team in the first place, that they all work together towards the same common goal, but she finds herself envious sometimes—that the crime scene speaks like Braille to Malcolm. In a way that only he can see and understand.

“What do you got, kid?” Gil asks, looking over paperwork from the cops that found the body.

Malcolm’s got this crinkle between his eyebrows as he kneels down next to the corpse, following the long line of her arm to her hand. He then looks at Edrisa, “I’m not sure yet. What’s cause of death?”

Dani blinks because…it feels like it should be fairly obvious, but then again, this is what she’s talking about. There appears to be a stab wound to the right of the victim’s torso, between her ribs, but Bright is zeroing in on the ligature marks around her neck.

“I thought that too.” Edrisa says, a tiny smile pulling at the ends of her mouth because her and the profiler seem to be on the same page.

Dani clears her throat, a bit impatient, “Someone want to fill in the rest of us?”

Malcolm smiles sheepishly up at her, his eyes a bright shade of blue, like sea glass, because of natural sunlight being let in through the windows of the living room. “Sorry.” He stands, straightening his shoulders, “There’s a few things going on here.”

“Aren’t there always?” Gil says under his breath, which makes Dani smile a little.

“We’re dealing with an inexperienced killer, meaning this was either his first kill or he’s still trying to figure out what his taste for murder is.”

Edrisa motions to the stab wound, “This is relatively shallow.”

“Right, it was used to stun her. Take her down more than anything else. The real violence happens up here,” Malcolm refers to her neck and very gently tilts the victim’s chin with a gloved hand so that they can see the other side of her face.

“He strangled her.” Dani chimes in, trying to follow the line of thought.

Bright hums and doesn’t quite touch the woman’s neck but he points out the jagged lines to Dani, “What do you see?”

She can feel Edrisa practically vibrating on the spot to respond to Bright’s question but Dani pushes that out of the way so she can focus in on what he’s trying to show her. She takes a step closer, careful not to step in any evidence as she tilts her head and follows the ligature marks on the woman’s neck. It takes her a moment, but she finally gets it, a sudden clarity falling onto her shoulders like a bucket of ice water.

“There’s two sets.”

Malcolm smiles and nods, “Right. Which means he tried, unsuccessfully, to strangle her the first time. He was most likely using…string or a shoelace and it snapped.”

“That’s a pretty amateur mistake.” Gill says a bit offhandedly, handing the paperwork over to a cop on duty.

Malcolm stands again, shrugging his one shoulder. Some of his hair comes loose from the gel and hangs in a strand near his forehead. There’s the softest hint of a grim smile to his face that she doesn’t understand when he says, “Yeah, well, no one’s perfect.”

Dani crosses her arms over his chest, taking a few more looks around the living room. She tries to focus on the crime scene in front of her, sifting for clues that might tell her more about Roberta or about who did this to her, and why. But she finds her focus shifting to Bright every so often…who’s acting _stranger_ than himself as of late, and that’s saying something. He’s moving in slow quiet paces, muttering to himself, pausing to give commentary to Edrisa and his hand is shaking—something he definitely tries to hide by putting it in his pocket.

It’s not that she hasn’t seen all this before, Bright has a _weird_ process that he applies to solving murders, but ever since his family’s issues with Endicott and the man’s disappearance? It seems like Bright’s been more on edge.

There’s this subtle shift in his eyes, in the way he sees people and the world around him. Something you might not notice if you weren’t looking for it. It disappears sometimes but comes back with a weighted vengeance. Her and Bright are supposed to be partners, and more importantly, they’re supposed to be friends. They made soft promises to one another to talk, to let the other in…but Malcolm’s _definitely_ keeping something from her.

But she doesn’t know how to approach that because Bright, if anything, is incredibly good at keeping his demons to himself.

Dani pauses near the couch in the living room, turning her head at a rust-colored stain in the carpet. She takes one of her gloved hands out of her pocket and kneels down to touch the patch—it’s not blood.

“Edrisa,” She says, looking up at the technician. “Can you tell whether Roberta was murdered here?”

Edrisa brightens at being tagged into a conversation, Malcolm and Gil hovering nearby to see what she’s going to say as Dani holds onto a hunch. “That’s an excellent question, uh, according to the blood, meaning there’s not as much as there should be, she was placed here after the fact.”

Dani stands, motioning to what had caught her attention in the first place. “That looks like rust.”

Bright rounds the couch to get a better look at what Dani is referring too, pursing his lips as he nods his head, “Yeah, it does.” He glances around the couch and moves it slightly with his hip, revealing half of a dirty shoeprint underneath. “Mud and rust…”

“A warehouse?” Dani guesses, looking over at Gil, “So let’s say the perp killed her there and brought her all the way back to her apartment? Why?”

“Ritual,” Malcolm rattles off, “Remorse,” He motions to the state of the apartment, “Ransacking.”

“Alliteration.” Edrisa continues after him almost seamlessly, a light joke not quite hitting the mark even though Malcolm smiles a little. She clears her throat when Gil gives her a patient look and she shakes her head, getting back down to business.

Dani chews on her lower lip, following the carpet out of the living room and back into the hallway where they came in. “How long has the elevator been broken?”

“I doubt our killer is dragging a body up fourteen flights of steps,” Malcolm lets out a long breath, probably considering his earlier struggle getting to this apartment. “At least not without getting caught.”

Gil smiles briefly, nodding his head as he starts to make his way out of the apartment to find the landlord. “Depending on when the elevator broke down, we can create a timeline of when he came back to this apartment.”

Dani lets out a brief breath, glancing at Bright before she heads out of the apartment complex as well to interview some of the neighbors.

\--

A case sometimes has moments where it feels like you’re standing still.

They’ve got all their evidence set up in one of the conference rooms—crime scene photos, autopsy reports, interviews, traffic surveillance, video footage from inside the apartment complex, paperwork upon paperwork of squares taped and tacked upon one another.

She has this weird thought about how much paper really gets stuck to the wall case after case after case. How much builds up after a week, a month, a year? How many people’s lives have they showcased to a single room?

Dani jumps a little as the door to the breakroom bangs open, Bright coming in with a soft expression. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”

She shrugs her one shoulder, looking down at the cup of tea she attempted to get together before getting lost in an inner monologue. “Did we get an ID of the guy in the elevator yet?” Their unsub had transported Roberta back to her apartment in a very large suitcase which was consistent by some of the injuries Edrisa said her body had maintained postmortem.

“Not yet,” He takes a mug out of the cabinet above the sink, milling around the cabinets for teabags, “They’re checking facial recognition and prints against the database.”

Dani chews on the inside of her cheek, pulling her teabag out of her cup to toss into the trash. “The waiting game is never easy.”

“No,” Malcolm agrees. “But can you imagine what they had to do _before_ databases.” He lets out a slow breath, “Don’t even get me started on having to use magnifying glasses to compare swirl patterns in fingerprints.”

“Yeah, I’m not going to get you started on that.” Dani agrees, smiling against the rim of her cup as she takes a sip. She’s not usually one to add sugar in her tea but…today her body is searching for that bit of sweetness.

Malcolm smirks and nods, _point taken._

“Would it be weird if the fingerprints left behind at the scene were the perp’s?” She asks because they haven’t confirmed yet whether extra prints in the apartment were the killer’s or not—sometimes apartment complexes were tricky in the sense that there’s a lot of foot traffic. But she’s curious, nonetheless, because, “Does that match up with the amateur theory?”

Malcolm taps his fingers against his mug aimlessly, “Did you use the last teabag?”

Dani smiles a little and reaches up inside the cabinet and moves aside a box of cereal, tugging down a box of crackers. She hands them to Malcolm, who looks inside,

“I may or may not have a secret stash of teabags, just in case gen pop runs out.”

Bright grins at her, rummaging through her selection to pull out a Jasmine one. He brings the teabag to his nose briefly before dropping it into his mug and adding hot water from the electric teapot.

“That’s very sneaky of you.”

“And you better not tell _anyone_ about it or I’m revoking our partnership.”

Bright hums, turning to lean against the counter as he steeps the teabag in his mug. “I _knew_ working with you would have perks.” A soft laugh bubbles in her chest and she shakes her head, adding sugar to her mug, “Back to the prints, he’s either an amateur or…he just doesn’t care if he gets caught.”

“Another sign of remorse?”

Bright purses his lips, suddenly lost in a very sudden thought that seems to overtake his entire body. Dani can’t see the one hand in his pocket, but if she had to guess? she’d put money on the fact that it was trembling. It’s about what she’s asked—about guilt or remorse or _something._ She doesn’t understand why he seems to be slipping into himself, getting lost in something heavy enough to pull him down.

“Bright?”

Malcolm blinks at his name being said, turning to look at her with confused blue eyes. “Oh uh, right. Maybe…or it’s not guilt at all and he’s just _enjoying_ the extra challenge. Think about how much more difficult it is to transport a body from wherever he’s murdered her, into a busy apartment complex, all to place her right back in her living room.”

Dani sighs out slowly—she’s not sure which is worse, dealing with an amateur or someone who’s more sadistic. They both came with their fair share of cons. She puts another spoonful of sugar into her mug, licking her lips before taking a sip. She feels more at balance with the tea in her hand and even though she has no reason to be in the lounge anymore, she doesn’t want to go back to the conference room yet.

She can feel Bright’s eyes on her, slipping over her skin like a shallow stream—cool and collected and patient. Dani’s unsure if he’s trying to read her, to pick thoughts and unsaid words out of her pores, or if he’s simply hanging out like she is.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Bright says after a moment, the sound nearly echoing in the silence sitting between them.

Dani smirks suddenly, can’t quite help it because, “Really?”

Malcolm doesn’t get it, pursing his lips and glancing down into his mug of tea. Like he somehow hopes it’s a Magic 8 ball that’s going to tell him what to do next. He’s not always the best with social situations and he misreads her one word in thinking he’s overstepped some sort of boundary.

“Did you know the origin of that idiom is from Sir Thomas More?” He clears his throat, giving a direct quote, “‘In such wise that other folk sodainly say to them a peny for your thought.’” Malcolm’s a little pleased with himself, a twitch of a smile finding its way onto his lips.

And Dani shakes her head, “I meant…you’re really asking me for _my_ thoughts when it’s obvious you’ve got something on your mind?”

Bright clears his throat before giving a light shake of his head, “Nothing more than the usual skeletons in the closet.”

Dani can’t say that she’s surprised when Bright skirts around the topic but that doesn’t stop her from being slightly disappointed. And maybe it’s a low blow but it’s clear that he’s struggling with something heavy, painful—and she’s been there before. If it weren’t for having people like Gil in her life, she might have been smothered under the weight of issues that nearly refused to leave her.

“Skeletons and ghosts, hmm?” She asks quietly, looking down at her mug. Dani takes another sip of tea, holding her breath for a brief moment. “We’re friends, right? Partners?”

There’s a slight pinch to his face, like he hates that she has to ask that but…can he really blame her? “Dani…” He trails off a moment, “Of course we are.”

She bites down on the inside of her cheek, waiting for the other shoe to drop, for him to put up those walls between them, to keep them reinforced. She understands keeping things close to the chest, things that seem too ugly to share—what it’s like to only rely on yourself.

_You’re the one I like talking to—and I promise, I’m gonna do better._

“Friends are supposed to talk to one another, right?” Dani tries to dig to the root of the problem here because it’s not like she’s expecting Bright to not have secrets—everyone does, but he seems a bit unpredictable lately. And that’s coming from someone who handles Bright’s impulsiveness on a daily basis. “I’m worried about you.”

Bright takes a step forward and gently touches her hand that’s hovering down by her side, squeezing her fingertips against his palm. “Don’t be—I’m fine.”

Dani holds his gaze, trying to look past the layers of what feels like oceans to swim through in those blue eyes of his. “You know, you’re a decent profiler but a _lousy_ liar. You said I could trust you—”

“And you can.” He says quickly.

She sighs softly, giving a firm nod before she turns to walk out of the lounge, “How am I supposed to trust you when you don't tell me things?”

The door gently bangs shut on her way out.

\--

The case eventually comes together like a story and missing pieces fall into place.

The team is looking for a Sherman Silver, age forty-two, recently divorced, which according to Bright was the perfect stressor for him to begin taking out his aggression on other women. Roberta Vanderlee looks exactly like Sherman’s ex-wife, down to the hair, eye color and build. He’s too much of a coward to kill his own wife—but these other women are easier targets. Wrong place, wrong time.

They track down his apartment and the hardware store he’s been working for. Down the street from that? An abandoned warehouse near a riverbank. According to Edrisa—the mud and the rust would work perfectly for that building even though she’s not one hundred percent sure. She’d need some samples in order to compare.

Bright and Dani head there anyways to check the building out along with a few patrol cars—they have no confirmed sightings of Sherman but if this _is_ where he murdered Roberta, he might be hiding around in this giant, dingy warehouse.

“Can’t murderers decide they want to hold up in a Hilton for once?” She mumbles, mostly to herself as she adjusts her bulletproof vest and sets her coat aside for better mobility.

Malcolm smirks, taking a look at the large, square building that seems half-dilapidated. A house of cards ready to tumble at any moment. “Hope you’ve gotten a tetanus shot recently.”

The patrol cops take the back of the warehouse while her and Malcolm cover the front. She knows Gil is on his way too with a few other men for back-up, stuck in traffic, but they’ve currently got more than enough people to begin the search.

She’s quiet as she takes patient steps into the warehouse, the building cold and damp to the point where it feels like it’s sticking to her bones and weighing her down. Dani uses a small flashlight to guide the aim of her gun, checking over her shoulder every so often to see where Bright is and to keep her lines of sight clear.

“Dani.” He says suddenly and she hears it at the same time too. Whimpering.

Dani stops suddenly to get a better listen before they turn a corner and head into another room. The space mostly looks the same, broken-down sheet metal, rusted nails and fallen beams, wet carboard boxes, the remnants of what looked to be desks or chairs and shattered glass. It’s not the easiest place to navigate, there’s what feels like small traps everywhere given the decrepit state of the warehouse, but Dani moves quickly.

Her eyes are having a horrible time adjusting to the dark, even with the help of her flashlight, but she finally manages to see the figure of a woman sitting with her back to them in a chair. Her blonde hair is ragged and mussed and as Dani’s flashlight draws up—the retreating figure of someone running.

Sherman.

“NYPD!” She yells after him, “Freeze!” He’s too far for her to shoot and she pauses at the woman in the chair—who looks exactly like Sherman’s ex-wife, once again taking out her likeness on an innocent woman. But at least she’s alive.

“Stay with her,” Dani instructs to Bright, barely over her shoulder as she begins to run, “Call Gil! See how far he is!”

“Dani, wait!” Malcolm calls after her, his voice retreating and disappearing as she turns corners, trying to listen to where Sherman might have gone. She knows the irony sitting on her shoulders, that she’s not waiting for backup despite the hundred times she’s told Bright to wait for the same thing before chasing after a perp.

But she can’t stop herself. She can’t let this guy get away.

Bullets fly out of a gun not too far away and she must be gaining ground on him, otherwise there’d be no need to fire.

“NYPD! It’s over, Sherman! Put your gun down.” She takes a deep breath into her lungs, turning a sharp corner and checking for her blind spots.

Dani knows this is a bad idea when the end of the hall comes to a set of steps but she can hear footsteps above her head. So, she ascends them slowly, making sure to keep track of where she’s putting her feet. This place isn’t sturdy and all it’d take is one mistake—

When she presses her shoulder into a room, clearing the door, Sherman blindsides her. He slams her against the wall to blitz her, which works, and she tumbles against the ground while he runs. None of that would be a big deal except the floor cracks like ice on a river underneath her and before she knows it, it starts to break in half from one large fission.

Dani rolls quickly, the ground giving way beneath her, rotten wood and rust clouding the air and nearly choking her. She coughs, her back hitting the wall. She scrambles to get up, rushing to the corner of the room but that doesn’t stop the domino effect of the floor crumbling apart.

Dani holds her breath, standing incredibly still and squeezing her eyes shut. She’s been on a frozen lake before, has been able to feel the solidness under her feet splinter away until she’s underwater, under ice. It was one of the most terrifying things she’s ever experienced when she was a child.

This isn’t quite the same—if the floor gives way with her still on it, there’s no pulling herself back up.

A door bangs open a few feet across from her, Bright’s mouth practically gaping at the hole in the floor before his worried gaze finds hers. There are a hundred things she wants to say to him at once…and yet the only thing that comes out is,

“I told you to stay with the girl.”

“Gil’s with her.” He promises, shaking his head with a slight tilt that tells her _really? That’s what you’re concerned about?_ “Can you…can you move?”

“There’s not that much to move to.” She admits carefully, glancing at the collapsed plaster, wood, and metal around her. Dani’s backed up against a wall, a window a little further away from her, and that’s not going to do her any good unless the fire department is called. There’s not enough time for her to wait there, to continue adding her weight to the buckling floor.

Bright nods, seeming to follow her train of thought. He takes very slow steps into the room, arms outstretched. “You need to jump.”

“ _What?”_ She snaps, “Are you out of your damn mind? No.” God, this is the _last_ person she needs up here with her. Bright is the same person who’s cut a man’s hand off, who’s thrown himself out a window to avoid a bomb, who’d probably set himself on fire if it helped a case.

“Oh so you’ll just, what? Wait around for the floor to give?” He asks, taking another few patient steps in, testing his weight on the remaining solid ground.

Bright walks in as much as he can but he still seems so far away. There’s not much of a running start Dani can take, either—she needs to push herself off the wall and reach for him and not look down in the process. She shakes her head, her heart beginning to pound in her ears, _she can’t do this._ She’s not even that afraid of heights, not really, but…falling to her death really isn’t high on her list of priorities either.

“You need to jump.” Malcolm calmly repeats himself, his eyes not yet on her but looking at the giant hole in the floor. “Unless you’ve got another brilliant idea, which I’m all ears.”

“Oh fuck off.” She snaps.

“That’s the spirit,” Bright smiles a little but then takes a look at her face, his expression shifting slightly as he senses her fear. “I’ll catch you.”

There’s this instant snap inside Dani’s chest that reminds her of a rubberband breaking because, of course, Bright will catch her if she jumps. And yet…there’s the smallest voice in the back of her mind, making her second guess her movements, making her hesitate. She doesn’t completely trust him—and she needs to if she’s going to jump.

“Dani,” He repeats, gaining her attention again. Malcolm nods slowly, “Seriously, I’ve got you. I’ll catch you.”

Dani squeezes her eyes shut for a moment before she realizes that she’s got no other choice, she _has_ to move. So she draws back, the heel of her boot hitting the wall behind her and she goes for it. She jumps and Bright reaches out, wrapping his arms around her waist and dragging her back. The movement feels fast and fluid but she knows how haphazard it really is, how he has to yank her back from the yawning cavity practically separating the warehouse room. The tip of her shoe drags over the edge and he makes a solid noise as she collides with his chest.

Dani clings to him as Malcolm pulls, taking her out of the room and helping her grab her footing as best he can. She lets out a harsh breath, relief nearly swallowing her whole as her hands begin shaking from excess adrenaline.

Bright keeps them close together, smiling as he squeezes around her waist. “Good thing you got a wide stride.”

A sudden laugh sneaks up out of Dani’s chest and she can’t help but lean her forehead against Malcolm’s shoulder before she feels strong enough to pull away.

\--

Luckily, Sherman ran out of the back of the building where patrol was already waiting to arrest him and Gil tells her that the woman he tied up is going to be just fine. Dani’s doing well too, despite being slammed into a wall and having to jump over a giant, disintegrating chasm in the floor. Stranger things have definitely happened but she’s lucky that Bright was there, that he found her, that she didn’t fall.

It could have been worse. It can _always_ be worse.

Dani presses the buzzer to Bright’s apartment complex and he lets her up, having the door open by the time she reaches his place. She smiles as the profiler stands in the doorway, looking incredibly casual in a pair of gray slacks and a cream-colored sweater. It’s thick-knit and expensive, Dani can tell just by looking at him.

“I brought raspberry bread.” She says, holding up the tin with one of her hands.

“Oh, well that’s the password.” Bright teases, letting her into his apartment. He closes the door behind her and she unzips her coat, taking a look around the place. She’s disrupted a routine of some kind—she can see a display of pills on the kitchen counter, paired with open case files, orange juice, and a bottle of water.

Sunshine chirps in the cage beside her and Dani moves to say hello to the bird before wandering into the kitchen space, “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“You didn’t.” Malcolm assures her, brushing past to get two small plates down from the cabinets near his fridge. “Besides, I can’t remember the last time I ate raspberry bread.” He pauses. “Or ate anything at all.”

Dani smirks even though that shouldn’t be funny. She unwraps the foil off of tin in her hands and licks her lips, taking the butter knife when he offers it to her. She concentrates on the task at hand before pausing, looking up at her partner,

“I should tell you…I baked this.”

Malcolm blinks, “Why does that sound like a threat?”

Dani laughs a little and cuts two pieces, putting them on the small plates he’s provided. The bottom of the bread is definitely a little burnt. “I’m actually not that great at baking but it’s the thought that counts? I wanted to make sure we were good.”

“So this burnt bread is to thank me for not letting you fall through a huge hole in the ground?”

She lightly smacks his chest with the back of her hand and Bright grins, putting his own up in mock surrender. He then takes a fork and cuts a small piece off the corner of his slice.

“The bread is kinda for that,” Dani agrees, picking up her fork as well, “But it’s also to make sure that you know that I _do_ trust you. Even if you don’t always tell me everything.”

Bright licks his lips, staring down at the bread for a few moments before looking up at her. “It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s…complicated. But I promise, the minute it’s not? I’ll talk to you about what’s going on. You’re the only person I _want_ to talk to about it. Okay?”

Dani smiles a little, the words touching and warm in the center of her chest. Even though she tries to convince herself its slight heartburn from the raspberries.

It’s a small win—and she’ll take that. “Okay,” She agrees and leans her elbows down onto the counter, tapping on the edge of his plate. “The bread is terrible, isn’t it?” Dani asks suddenly.

Bright smiles sheepishly, forcing another bite into his mouth. “No, it’s uh…it’s really good. Not dry like sawdust at all.”

Dani’s eyes widen, a small, astounded noise leaving her lips, “That’s not true.”

“I can’t figure you out, you either want me to be honest with you or not.” Bright teases and then tries to feed her a piece of the so-called terrible bread.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading and any comments or kudos that you leave. means a lot! i'm over at blainesebastian on tumblr if you'd like to say hey :3


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